Inside ARIA

ARIA is the UK government’s bold new bet on science and technology. Its mission? To chase breakthroughs so radical they could spawn trillion-pound industries and reshape everyday life.

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency was created to be fast-moving - exempt from the usual public sector bureaucracy. No slow funding rounds. No rigid procurement rules. Just speed, agility, and a mandate to take risks. It's backed by MPs across the political spectrum - but is it a smart use of public money?

The idea came from Dominic Cummings, inspired by America’s 'DARPA' - the agency behind the internet, GPS, and personal computing. ARIA launched in 2022 and has already sunk millions into 12 audacious programmes: from designing crops with massively synthetic genomes to building robots on entirely new principles, and developing cutting edge neurotechnologies for psychiatric illness.

Evan Davis goes inside ARIA to meet the people steering this high-stakes experiment and explore the frontier science they’ve chosen to back. Can ARIA deliver world-changing innovation - or will it prove an expensive gamble?

Presented by Evan Davis
Produced by Ilan Goodman and Sophie Ormiston